SNEAK PEEK
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1. Audrey
Although the morning was much younger than she—with nearly seventy-six years in her back pocket—as Audrey Myers lifted her gaze to the pale blue sky, her bright eyes sparkled as fresh as the dew in the grass, and her dark skin glowed with its own deceptive youth. She breathed in the cool, crisp air, held it deep, the taste of autumn sublime in her lungs. Geese honked as they flew overhead. Then she sighed, a soft smile upon her wrinkled mouth. It was a morning like any other, and she cherished each and every one. She shuffled along, hands tucked into the pockets of her light jacket, until she came to the intersection of Blakemore and Crestview. As was usually the case during these early hours, traffic was sparse, but nevertheless Audrey waited patiently for the crosswalk light before hurrying to the other side. There, she followed Crestview for another block. |
Peering toward the coffee-shop across the street, Audrey watched a young woman fuss with a large poster hanging in the window. Noticing Audrey, the woman lifted a friendly hand, and in doing so the poster she held fell askew. Audrey smiled, then promptly looked elsewhere, allowing the woman her freedom to grumble in private.
Soon the sidewalk Audrey followed brought her alongside a black, wrought-iron fence. Beyond its border a dark, lush property stretched into obscurity, the morning sun yet to illuminate those hard, sharp-angled objects protruding from the shadows therein. She followed the iron fence until it led her to the property entrance.
A large, double gate stood open, welcoming her with its narrow paved road. As she approached, she flicked her eyes to the iron banner which curved across the entrance:
MARROW FALLS CEMETERY
The grounds were overgrown with tall and shady trees—American elms, red maples, white oaks, weeping hemlocks—so that as Audrey entered through the iron-gate entrance, she left the morning behind her and stepped into a strange, almost out-of-time twilight. In another hour or so, the sun would finally reach through the branches and fill the grounds with daylight. But for now, it was a world of its own.
Making her way into the heart of the cemetery, as always Audrey admired the various headstones as she passed. By now, she knew many of the names on those cold slabs, even when she never knew the bodies buried six feet underneath.
For instance, she knew that the four-foot-tall stone angel she passed each and every morning belonged to Lucas Pearson, aged nine, deceased only four years prior. Most who visited even on a monthly basis knew that stone angel and the name upon it, as it was impossible not to be drawn to its beauty, to read its epitaph.
She also knew the names Barbara and Mickey Townsend, aged eighty-eight and eighty-four respectively, each deceased and buried within a month of the other. One only needed to read a random sampling of the graves within these grounds to know just how common a tale that was.
Yes, she’d learned the names and details of many headstones over the years, all those she passed along her daily route, but that route only ever led her to one in particular.
The only grave she truly came for.
Audrey stepped off the pavement and onto a gravel path. The path circled out of sight from the main road, winding through plots that were as wildly ‘organized’ as the myriad of trees shading them. Around her, the silence was thick—a still and natural hush beneath the morning gloom, as her slip-on sneakers crunched and whispered through the gravel.
She stepped off the gravel path and into the grass. She moved between a set of three graves, toward the row of graves behind them. There, she arrived before one in particular—a simple, modest headstone which stood as tall as her knees. Bending slowly, her old body creaking and popping with the effort, Audrey knelt in the grass before it, situating herself as she did each and every day. Once settled, she took a deep breath and regarded the smooth, standing slab before her. Her resulting sigh was loud in the silence.
“Good morning,” she said softly.
The headstone read as follows:
IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM EUGENE MYERS
JULY 5TH 1963 - APRIL 24TH 2015
BELOVED FATHER & SON
Audrey didn’t cry during her visits these days, but that was only a recent development. Even still, as she read the epitaph now in the dim glow of morning light, she felt a tingling, prickling sensation behind her eyes. Tears welling up, but not enough to spill. Instead she simply smiled.
“You’ll be happy to know Franklin passed his Algebra exam…” Now those tears welled up a little more. Enough that her eyes brimmed with them. “He’s so much like you, William. Never any good at math, not his strong suit, but he puts in the work, stays after school to get help from his teachers, just like you would’ve told him to…”
Audrey laughed then, lowering her gaze to the patch of grass between her knees and the headstone. Thinking. Remembering. Daydreaming.
“He wants to be a published writer someday,” she said, nodding. “I know I’ve told you that several times already, but I can’t help going on about it. I’ve never seen a boy his age who just sits and writes like he does. I think you’d be proud. I know you’d be proud. All that science fiction you fed him growing up. His grandaddy isn’t so keen on the whole writer thing, but personally I can see it. Your son’s got such a way with words…” A tear slipped down her sun-spotted cheek, and she wiped it away without hesitation. “I’ll have to bring the last story he wrote and read it to you sometime. He’s got so many now, I tell him he should put them all together and send it to somebody. Hell, I don’t know how any of that works, but…”
She looked up from the ground as the light noticeably shifted around her. Shafts of sunlight had found their way through the trees, piercing the cemetery’s shade like a holy cleansing. Beautifully serene.
“He still writes in his journal every day, too, just like his therapist tells him—” Something moved along the gravel path at Audrey’s back. A shuffle of feet. She tensed at the sound, shoulders hunched. All at once, her tearful eyes dried up like stones under the sunlight. She peered back, breath held.
“I’m sorry, did I startle you?”
A man stood partially illuminated on the gravel path—only his lower body revealed by the light. His black slacks shined neatly, the silver buckle on his belt twinkling. From his hand, a glossy black suitcase dangled against his upper leg. Audrey drew her surprised eyes from his feet up to his torso, taking in his formal wear, the white, button-up shirt tucked into his pants, becoming gradually more obscured in shadow the higher her eyes traveled. Squinting against the morning light herself, she could hardly make out his face.
“I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that.”
His voice was terribly young to Audrey’s ears. She imagined a junior in high school—all their faces appeared more and more childlike the older she got. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. The suitcase he carried gleamed brilliantly as it caught the sunlight.
“Excuse me?” Audrey said. “Can I help you?”
She searched those shadows across his face, gleaning only the faintest impression of his friendly mouth, the apples of his cheeks. Then he moved forward, one step off the gravel path into the grass, and the light revealed him.
“I don’t mean to be a bother,” he said. “I only heard your voice, and…”
He paused, and in his moment of hesitancy Audrey finally took him in, now standing fully in the ray of sunlight shedding from the branches overhead. He was young, though not quite as young as she had suspected. Not a high-schooler by any means. Not quite baby-faced enough, she thought. Early twenties, more like. Though, to be fair, her knack for guessing someone’s age was getting worse as the years went by. His skin was white, lightly tanned. Clean-shaven. Short, brown hair, neatly combed. Beneath a dark and sturdy brow, his deep-set eyes were pinched with his smile. The pale blue shimmered like icicles melting in the sunlight.
“…and I thought you sounded remarkably like someone I once knew.”
His smile broadened. His perfect, white teeth winked handsomely.
“Someone you once knew?” Audrey said, a tinge of wariness.
His smile faltered slightly. Brow furrowed.
“I’m sorry if I’m interrupting a private moment,” he said. “I really didn’t mean to surprise you like that.”
Audrey breathed in deeply, gathering her patience.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s just, I’m usually the only one here at this hour.”
Precisely why she liked to come at this time, she thought.
“I understand. I like to go for early-morning walks for the same reason.” He glanced around the cemetery, or rather the small smattering of graves in this particular pocket of it. “But your voice did remind me of someone. Before I knew what I was doing, I found myself coming to see you and… well, I realize now how inappropriate that was. I apologize for disturbing you. You’re not who I thought you might be…”
He didn’t speak like anyone his age, Audrey thought. More eloquent. Oddly polite. She wished not to be disturbed, that was true enough, and yet at the same time she was curious.
“And who does my voice remind you of?”
That warm smile touched the corner of his lips—a lopsided smirk. Bashful, almost.
“This will sound funny,” he said. Those breezy eyes of his flickered shyly. “You sound just like my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Barrow. You even look a little like her, too.”
Audrey caught herself smiling as she listened—his timid nature in conjunction with his marked handsomeness a contagious combination.
“How old are you?” she asked.
He brightened, eyebrows raised. “I turn twenty-three next month.”
“And you can recall the voice of your sixth-grade teacher so far back?”
“It’s a distinctive voice, I suppose.” The young man shrugged. “Also, it’s fair to say she made an impact on me. More than any other teacher I ever had—maybe even more than my own parents.”
Audrey nodded, appreciating the sentiment.
“Those teachers are rare. I wish there were more of them in this world…”
She turned to face her late son’s grave again, regarded the chiseled epitaph with thoughtful eyes. William Eugene Myers. She couldn’t help thinking of his living child, her grandson, and the struggles he currently faced in school. A passionate teacher really made all the difference, she thought.
There came a sound—or perhaps not a sound at all, but rather the slightest change in the air against the back of her neck—and suddenly Audrey sensed the young man had moved closer to her, standing farther off the gravel path. She turned quickly toward him, an inkling of panic blooming in her empty stomach. First her eyes happened upon the suitcase in his hand, close enough now she saw the scuffs along its corners, the blemishes upon its gold-plated handle. Then she peered up into that young face, his head bowed as she found him reading her son’s grave for himself.
“So young,” he murmured. His icy eyes darted left to right as he read each line. When he finished, he looked to Audrey once more and a sympathetic warmth came over him. “He was your son, wasn’t he?”
Audrey nodded, turning back to the headstone.
“That’s right… Taken much too young. But of course… he’s not alone in that—”
She flinched as suddenly the young man set his suitcase down in the grass. He crouched, kneeling beside her. He rested his hands politely between his thighs, observing the slab of granite for a time, and Audrey simply watched him from the corner of her eye. It was strange such a young man should be wandering the cemetery at this hour, she knew, and stranger still that he should take an interest in chatting with her like this—and yet, at the same time she felt comfortable. She was intrigued. There was something special about this boy. This man. To Audrey’s senior sensibilities he resembled a boy, but a definite intelligence lay behind those crystal blue eyes. A wisdom beyond his years, she thought.
An old soul.
“Do you come every day?” the young man asked, continuing to study her son’s gravestone. “To talk to him?”
“Every day,” Audrey said. “At least, it’s not often I don’t.”
“Do you believe he listens?”
As his question hung between them, dangling like a shared breath, the cemetery seemed to suspend itself in an even deeper silence—as if a glass dome had been gently placed over their kneeling bodies. Audrey hesitated giving an answer.
“I think so,” she said. “Yes… I think so.”
Audrey turned and found him watching her again. He smiled with half his mouth. Those piercing blue eyes wandered over her face, a trace of admiration in them. At least, Audrey interpreted admiration there.
“I think so, too,” he said. He turned away, head bent, and regarded the suitcase standing neatly upright in the grass on his other side. He gazed upon it almost dreamily. She watched as his smile drew wider upon his profile. “I’m not a religious man. But I believe the universe holds many secrets. Would you agree with that, Audrey?”
Audrey stiffened as he turned to see her once more, and for the briefest instant her brain relayed a warning to the rest of her body—an urge to bolt. But the young man’s gaze found hers quickly, fastened them together, and all at once she felt settled. Reassured. There was a certain fondness about his face, as if he were terribly glad to be sitting beside her. She almost couldn’t help feeling the same way.
“How do you know my name?” she asked, searching that fond gaze. “Do I know you?”
He blinked slowly, and his timid smile became a coy smirk.
“I think I was meant to find you here,” he said. He tilted his head slightly, still watching her, gauging her reaction with his own private amusement. “We were meant to meet here today.”
Much to her own surprise, Audrey felt her cheeks strain with a smile of her own.
“Who are you?”
The young man took a deep breath. “Depending on who you ask, I have a few different names. But you can call me Leon.”
Audrey flashed a dangerous look to the suitcase next to him. Her old heart began to pound, to chug, to hammer under her brittle ribs. Following her gaze, the young man reached for the suitcase. He lifted it by its gold handle and placed it on the grass before them, laid flat between their knees and the gravestone. He bent forward slightly, his hands on either of its two clasps, readying to pop them open. He paused.
“Can I show you something?”
Audrey’s mouth hung open slightly, breathing shallowly. She glanced several times between the suitcase and the young man’s anticipating gaze, desperate for him to keep going, afraid all the same, and altogether unsure what her truth was.
“What is it?” she asked.
The young man—Leon—pinched the clasps on the suitcase so that each sprang open with a satisfying click.
“Something more precious than life itself,” he said.
He cracked the suitcase open.
Just enough for a glimpse.
***
Soon the sidewalk Audrey followed brought her alongside a black, wrought-iron fence. Beyond its border a dark, lush property stretched into obscurity, the morning sun yet to illuminate those hard, sharp-angled objects protruding from the shadows therein. She followed the iron fence until it led her to the property entrance.
A large, double gate stood open, welcoming her with its narrow paved road. As she approached, she flicked her eyes to the iron banner which curved across the entrance:
MARROW FALLS CEMETERY
The grounds were overgrown with tall and shady trees—American elms, red maples, white oaks, weeping hemlocks—so that as Audrey entered through the iron-gate entrance, she left the morning behind her and stepped into a strange, almost out-of-time twilight. In another hour or so, the sun would finally reach through the branches and fill the grounds with daylight. But for now, it was a world of its own.
Making her way into the heart of the cemetery, as always Audrey admired the various headstones as she passed. By now, she knew many of the names on those cold slabs, even when she never knew the bodies buried six feet underneath.
For instance, she knew that the four-foot-tall stone angel she passed each and every morning belonged to Lucas Pearson, aged nine, deceased only four years prior. Most who visited even on a monthly basis knew that stone angel and the name upon it, as it was impossible not to be drawn to its beauty, to read its epitaph.
She also knew the names Barbara and Mickey Townsend, aged eighty-eight and eighty-four respectively, each deceased and buried within a month of the other. One only needed to read a random sampling of the graves within these grounds to know just how common a tale that was.
Yes, she’d learned the names and details of many headstones over the years, all those she passed along her daily route, but that route only ever led her to one in particular.
The only grave she truly came for.
Audrey stepped off the pavement and onto a gravel path. The path circled out of sight from the main road, winding through plots that were as wildly ‘organized’ as the myriad of trees shading them. Around her, the silence was thick—a still and natural hush beneath the morning gloom, as her slip-on sneakers crunched and whispered through the gravel.
She stepped off the gravel path and into the grass. She moved between a set of three graves, toward the row of graves behind them. There, she arrived before one in particular—a simple, modest headstone which stood as tall as her knees. Bending slowly, her old body creaking and popping with the effort, Audrey knelt in the grass before it, situating herself as she did each and every day. Once settled, she took a deep breath and regarded the smooth, standing slab before her. Her resulting sigh was loud in the silence.
“Good morning,” she said softly.
The headstone read as follows:
IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM EUGENE MYERS
JULY 5TH 1963 - APRIL 24TH 2015
BELOVED FATHER & SON
Audrey didn’t cry during her visits these days, but that was only a recent development. Even still, as she read the epitaph now in the dim glow of morning light, she felt a tingling, prickling sensation behind her eyes. Tears welling up, but not enough to spill. Instead she simply smiled.
“You’ll be happy to know Franklin passed his Algebra exam…” Now those tears welled up a little more. Enough that her eyes brimmed with them. “He’s so much like you, William. Never any good at math, not his strong suit, but he puts in the work, stays after school to get help from his teachers, just like you would’ve told him to…”
Audrey laughed then, lowering her gaze to the patch of grass between her knees and the headstone. Thinking. Remembering. Daydreaming.
“He wants to be a published writer someday,” she said, nodding. “I know I’ve told you that several times already, but I can’t help going on about it. I’ve never seen a boy his age who just sits and writes like he does. I think you’d be proud. I know you’d be proud. All that science fiction you fed him growing up. His grandaddy isn’t so keen on the whole writer thing, but personally I can see it. Your son’s got such a way with words…” A tear slipped down her sun-spotted cheek, and she wiped it away without hesitation. “I’ll have to bring the last story he wrote and read it to you sometime. He’s got so many now, I tell him he should put them all together and send it to somebody. Hell, I don’t know how any of that works, but…”
She looked up from the ground as the light noticeably shifted around her. Shafts of sunlight had found their way through the trees, piercing the cemetery’s shade like a holy cleansing. Beautifully serene.
“He still writes in his journal every day, too, just like his therapist tells him—” Something moved along the gravel path at Audrey’s back. A shuffle of feet. She tensed at the sound, shoulders hunched. All at once, her tearful eyes dried up like stones under the sunlight. She peered back, breath held.
“I’m sorry, did I startle you?”
A man stood partially illuminated on the gravel path—only his lower body revealed by the light. His black slacks shined neatly, the silver buckle on his belt twinkling. From his hand, a glossy black suitcase dangled against his upper leg. Audrey drew her surprised eyes from his feet up to his torso, taking in his formal wear, the white, button-up shirt tucked into his pants, becoming gradually more obscured in shadow the higher her eyes traveled. Squinting against the morning light herself, she could hardly make out his face.
“I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that.”
His voice was terribly young to Audrey’s ears. She imagined a junior in high school—all their faces appeared more and more childlike the older she got. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. The suitcase he carried gleamed brilliantly as it caught the sunlight.
“Excuse me?” Audrey said. “Can I help you?”
She searched those shadows across his face, gleaning only the faintest impression of his friendly mouth, the apples of his cheeks. Then he moved forward, one step off the gravel path into the grass, and the light revealed him.
“I don’t mean to be a bother,” he said. “I only heard your voice, and…”
He paused, and in his moment of hesitancy Audrey finally took him in, now standing fully in the ray of sunlight shedding from the branches overhead. He was young, though not quite as young as she had suspected. Not a high-schooler by any means. Not quite baby-faced enough, she thought. Early twenties, more like. Though, to be fair, her knack for guessing someone’s age was getting worse as the years went by. His skin was white, lightly tanned. Clean-shaven. Short, brown hair, neatly combed. Beneath a dark and sturdy brow, his deep-set eyes were pinched with his smile. The pale blue shimmered like icicles melting in the sunlight.
“…and I thought you sounded remarkably like someone I once knew.”
His smile broadened. His perfect, white teeth winked handsomely.
“Someone you once knew?” Audrey said, a tinge of wariness.
His smile faltered slightly. Brow furrowed.
“I’m sorry if I’m interrupting a private moment,” he said. “I really didn’t mean to surprise you like that.”
Audrey breathed in deeply, gathering her patience.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s just, I’m usually the only one here at this hour.”
Precisely why she liked to come at this time, she thought.
“I understand. I like to go for early-morning walks for the same reason.” He glanced around the cemetery, or rather the small smattering of graves in this particular pocket of it. “But your voice did remind me of someone. Before I knew what I was doing, I found myself coming to see you and… well, I realize now how inappropriate that was. I apologize for disturbing you. You’re not who I thought you might be…”
He didn’t speak like anyone his age, Audrey thought. More eloquent. Oddly polite. She wished not to be disturbed, that was true enough, and yet at the same time she was curious.
“And who does my voice remind you of?”
That warm smile touched the corner of his lips—a lopsided smirk. Bashful, almost.
“This will sound funny,” he said. Those breezy eyes of his flickered shyly. “You sound just like my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Barrow. You even look a little like her, too.”
Audrey caught herself smiling as she listened—his timid nature in conjunction with his marked handsomeness a contagious combination.
“How old are you?” she asked.
He brightened, eyebrows raised. “I turn twenty-three next month.”
“And you can recall the voice of your sixth-grade teacher so far back?”
“It’s a distinctive voice, I suppose.” The young man shrugged. “Also, it’s fair to say she made an impact on me. More than any other teacher I ever had—maybe even more than my own parents.”
Audrey nodded, appreciating the sentiment.
“Those teachers are rare. I wish there were more of them in this world…”
She turned to face her late son’s grave again, regarded the chiseled epitaph with thoughtful eyes. William Eugene Myers. She couldn’t help thinking of his living child, her grandson, and the struggles he currently faced in school. A passionate teacher really made all the difference, she thought.
There came a sound—or perhaps not a sound at all, but rather the slightest change in the air against the back of her neck—and suddenly Audrey sensed the young man had moved closer to her, standing farther off the gravel path. She turned quickly toward him, an inkling of panic blooming in her empty stomach. First her eyes happened upon the suitcase in his hand, close enough now she saw the scuffs along its corners, the blemishes upon its gold-plated handle. Then she peered up into that young face, his head bowed as she found him reading her son’s grave for himself.
“So young,” he murmured. His icy eyes darted left to right as he read each line. When he finished, he looked to Audrey once more and a sympathetic warmth came over him. “He was your son, wasn’t he?”
Audrey nodded, turning back to the headstone.
“That’s right… Taken much too young. But of course… he’s not alone in that—”
She flinched as suddenly the young man set his suitcase down in the grass. He crouched, kneeling beside her. He rested his hands politely between his thighs, observing the slab of granite for a time, and Audrey simply watched him from the corner of her eye. It was strange such a young man should be wandering the cemetery at this hour, she knew, and stranger still that he should take an interest in chatting with her like this—and yet, at the same time she felt comfortable. She was intrigued. There was something special about this boy. This man. To Audrey’s senior sensibilities he resembled a boy, but a definite intelligence lay behind those crystal blue eyes. A wisdom beyond his years, she thought.
An old soul.
“Do you come every day?” the young man asked, continuing to study her son’s gravestone. “To talk to him?”
“Every day,” Audrey said. “At least, it’s not often I don’t.”
“Do you believe he listens?”
As his question hung between them, dangling like a shared breath, the cemetery seemed to suspend itself in an even deeper silence—as if a glass dome had been gently placed over their kneeling bodies. Audrey hesitated giving an answer.
“I think so,” she said. “Yes… I think so.”
Audrey turned and found him watching her again. He smiled with half his mouth. Those piercing blue eyes wandered over her face, a trace of admiration in them. At least, Audrey interpreted admiration there.
“I think so, too,” he said. He turned away, head bent, and regarded the suitcase standing neatly upright in the grass on his other side. He gazed upon it almost dreamily. She watched as his smile drew wider upon his profile. “I’m not a religious man. But I believe the universe holds many secrets. Would you agree with that, Audrey?”
Audrey stiffened as he turned to see her once more, and for the briefest instant her brain relayed a warning to the rest of her body—an urge to bolt. But the young man’s gaze found hers quickly, fastened them together, and all at once she felt settled. Reassured. There was a certain fondness about his face, as if he were terribly glad to be sitting beside her. She almost couldn’t help feeling the same way.
“How do you know my name?” she asked, searching that fond gaze. “Do I know you?”
He blinked slowly, and his timid smile became a coy smirk.
“I think I was meant to find you here,” he said. He tilted his head slightly, still watching her, gauging her reaction with his own private amusement. “We were meant to meet here today.”
Much to her own surprise, Audrey felt her cheeks strain with a smile of her own.
“Who are you?”
The young man took a deep breath. “Depending on who you ask, I have a few different names. But you can call me Leon.”
Audrey flashed a dangerous look to the suitcase next to him. Her old heart began to pound, to chug, to hammer under her brittle ribs. Following her gaze, the young man reached for the suitcase. He lifted it by its gold handle and placed it on the grass before them, laid flat between their knees and the gravestone. He bent forward slightly, his hands on either of its two clasps, readying to pop them open. He paused.
“Can I show you something?”
Audrey’s mouth hung open slightly, breathing shallowly. She glanced several times between the suitcase and the young man’s anticipating gaze, desperate for him to keep going, afraid all the same, and altogether unsure what her truth was.
“What is it?” she asked.
The young man—Leon—pinched the clasps on the suitcase so that each sprang open with a satisfying click.
“Something more precious than life itself,” he said.
He cracked the suitcase open.
Just enough for a glimpse.
***